"I am always trying to think outside the box and remember that my view is not the only one on a given topic – even though this is sometimes hard to swallow."

What is your personal understanding of diversity and inclusion?
For me, diversity and inclusion means respecting and recognizing each person’s uniqueness and using these individual qualities to build a strong team that can overcome all sorts of challenges – by working together and combining their strengths. A well-built and diversified team is always more than a simple sum of its parts.

What does it mean to you to work in a diverse environment?
Working in a diverse environment is an opportunity to hear different points of view, to find different solutions to reach a common goal, as well as to enrich and improve your current skillset by adopting something new.

What is your personal impact on living diversity and inclusion?
I am always trying to think outside of the box and remember that my view is not the only one on a given topic – even though this is sometimes hard to swallow, and perhaps not always the best approach. However, by recognizing this and being more open to other people’s approaches, I experienced myself that you have a chance to go further more swiftly and accomplish goals that would otherwise be unreachable.

How did you experience working with diverse colleagues? What did you learn from it?
Being part of a global company like Deloitte gives you many opportunities to meet, communicate and work with people from diverse cultural backgrounds. Some of the main benefits of such an environment are getting novel ideas as well as exploring new ways on how you can handle yourself and adapt your style of communication. All of these learnings are very useful, not only in my professional life but also in my personal life.

Has your perception of diversity changed over the years?
Yes, very much so. To put it simply: the larger the circle of knowledge, the more you are aware of what you do not know. Working in a diversified environment for the past ten years has given me many opportunities to see how subjective and narrow-sighted we tend to be, despite our best efforts. This is where diversity kicks in and works wonders. People with different backgrounds, characters, tendencies and experiences can see the whole picture and solve whatever challenge is thrown their way, if they work together. In other words, diversity is a big plus for any team, organization and family.